I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled.

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.

I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.

I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.

I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.

Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help.

Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working.

Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.

I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?

I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.

Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time!

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.

You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this.

I can't really work on more than one thing at a time.

I don't think I make much of a distinction between the 'real' and the 'fantastic.' They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I'm concerned.

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head.

The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe.

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you're gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold.

I really feel like the gift is also the curse. It's always half-and-half. Whatever brings you the most joy will also probably bring you the most pain. Always a price to pay.

I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.

Anyway, the sort of love that will not wait is probably best to pass by.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.

I think secrets often come out. I spoke to a friend who is a therapist and I asked her if there were people who came to her and admitted to doing horrible things and she said, 'More than you know.'

I did go there later, but I hadn't been there before I wrote the book. Sometimes I feel like the imagined can feel more real than the real?

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world to go into another world.

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work “ but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.

Dreams came to men for many reasons, both as oracles and as warnings.

Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.

Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.

Shut up and do not think. All the theorists agree: shut up and keep the words from being said. And all of the scars will remain invisible; and all of the scars will remain under the skin. Where they belong.

When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.

Rest and self-care are so important. When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve others from the overflow. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.

People feel overloaded, that politics has become kind of a public utility: hot- and cold-running politics any time of the day or night.

Just a little detachment from the ego is needed.

When people buy, rescue, or otherwise acquire a dog from unscrupulous breeders or amateur rescue groups, they are making a decision with ethical consequences. They have a profound responsibility to consider their actions; to gauge the dog's behavior, to train it thoroughly and rigorously, to protect other humans and dogs from harm.

I've enjoyed collecting. I've enjoyed art ever since - I'll tell you when - I went to Columbia. I went to the Met, and I saw Poussin's 'Rape of the Sabine Women', and it's this incredible, epic, great, great painting.

Let's have fun at work.

Dance is just like film in that it allows for thoughts in movement.

Be someone's inspiration before you have the chance to be, inspire the change in someone that will inspire more change in the world.